I am an empath. I reach emotional resonance quicker than most people. I am an empath--like those illuminated people in the movie Minority Report who lie in that ghastly blue tank of water registering the emotive ripples in the ether. Their sensitivity is so acute, they are able to predict crimes before they happen. My degree of empathy hasn’t become that sophisticated, but I can tell you that when one of those ASPCA commercials about abandoned animals comes on the television, I switch the channel. I throw the letters away from PETA about the helicopter wolf killings to protect myself from feeling the pain. Since I’ve become a mother, it’s only gotten worse.

Violence to any child becomes violence to my child and then to me. Violence to any dog becomes violence to my dog and then to me. I practice ﻿Tonglen,﻿ a breathing meditation that inspires compassion. I try to breathe through the feelings. Empaths are hypersensitive to the trauma of anyone, but especially that of children and animals. I’ve debated with myself why this is. Perhaps this is because animals and children lack a proper voice to defend themselves. Perhaps it’s this injustice that fells me.

To be truly compassionate, however, we must not always turn away. In “It’s a Dog’s Life,” Patricia Reis’s essay on the abandoned Spanish greyhounds of Spain (galgos), she quotes Rilke, taking comfort that “no feeling is final.” Dr. Mary Baures quotes Yeats in her essay “Awakening Awe;” in order to stop suffering, we must start with the “bone scraps of the heart.”

I am only now learning that I can take action. But with action, must come refuge. That is the only way diving into the “bone scraps of the heart” can be sustainable.

This edition of The Compassion Anthology is titled “Compassion and Appreciation for the Natural World.” This is my way of taking action, of cultivating awareness of environmental exploitation while illustrating how truly inspiring the natural world can be. Also, to that end, we are holding a fundraiser for the World Wildlife Fund, an organization that covers all the bases of environmental stewardship from fighting climate change to promoting sustainable food systems, to safeguarding forests, lakes, and oceans. WWF seeks to educate and help those in business and government make sound decisions regarding natural resources and the environment in general, holding paramount protection of vulnerable species, places, and communities worldwide. (To donate, please see here).

With the current administration’s lack of reverence for the natural world, it is crucial to back organizations like WWF. At the time of this publication Trump has thus far signed into law the following: legislation that allows the aerial hunting of wolves and bears and bear-baiting in Alaska; legislation overturning Obama-era regulation prohibiting coal-mining waste to enter federal waterways; legislation regarding federal land use including streamlining decision-making processes regarding logging and mining while allowing little input by local communities on these matters. (For more on what Trump has signed into law, please read here.)

I heal from my empathetic overloads from walking in the woods. It is here that I take refuge and find what Dr. Baures calls “a deeper knowing.” I walk along the marsh and observe a doe shyly grazing, a great blue heron unfolding its magnificent wings, a coyote that lopes in front of me; in his eyes is a kind of wildness that is not found in my ordered and compartmentalized life. It is from my long walks in the woods that I work things out, that I make a product of my pain and observations, relating my emotional life to that of the natural world. This is the higher path of the empath: to create, to express, to process what our sensitive spirits take in from this tragic life. My book, Totem Beasts(Big Table, 2017) is such a work. While this edition of The Compassion Anthology is in publication, I will donate a portion of the proceeds from Totem Beasts to WWF.

The nature-inspired art that is published here is also for sale to benefit WWF as well as working artists. If you are interested in a piece, please query me first at compassionanthology@gmail.com to see if the piece is available and if it is, we’ll ship it to you. Both prints and originals are for sale.

In this edition, we are championing the fiction published by Ashland Creek Press. Ashland Creek Press is dedicated to publishing compelling stories about the environment, animal protection, ecology, and wildlife. We are featuring work from their highly praised anthologies Among Animalsand Among Animals 2. If you like what you read here, I urge you to buy the collections.

Also in this edition is my interview with Gail Entrekin of Canary literary magazine. Gail believes that literature can be a tool for understanding the environmental crisis on a personal level and that this eventually translates to society in general. Canary features poetry and short prose that "explores one's engagement with the natural world."

It’s not too great of a leap to say that an empath is susceptible to the traumas of the Earth as a whole. It saddens me that the maple leaves are falling down brown and brittle from lack of a good rain and that they have been doing this for the past three summers. As I walk and crunch them underfoot, I think of the blight of the chestnut trees in Ray Keifetz’s fantastical story “Miriam’s Lantern.” The river behind my house used to freeze solid in winter, enough for people to drive trucks over it. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now the daffodils are coming up in January and the petals freeze in February and turn brown in March.

But to seek a quick solution to climate change is like curing the symptom and not the disease. Richard Heinberg, a Senior Fellow at the ﻿Post Carbon Institute in﻿ his essay “Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Problem and Why Technology Won’t Save Us” cautions against a quick technological fix, if it were at all possible. He says we’re in need of a complete systemic change more in line with the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra introduced by ecologists in the 1970s. Simply put, we need to cure our addiction to energy and downsize our demand. This will curtail not only climate change, but also habitat destruction, pollution—the list goes on and on. The good news, he says, is that systemic change is fractal in nature: he believes as Gail Entrekin believes that it begins with an individual. It begins with mindfulness and entails siding with reverence and awe and conservation. It entails, as the poet Joey Gould says, “open[ing] a merciful door.”